So, Jim, you went ahead and did it...

[OperaHawk]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Rare-1981-Fuel-Injected-Coupe-52K-miles-Driver_W0QQitemZ120399232339QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_ Cars_Trucks?hash=item120399232339&_trksid=p4506.c0.m245&_trkparms=72%3A317%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1308

Looks good - great job!

Sooooo... now what?

SBJ

[Jim Keller]

Yup! tired of my spine hurtin, hurts to work on these days, hurts to push a clutch and throw a shifter back and forth and sit in the Italian driving position required for a guy my size, I am 6'2 with a fused spine with rods, screws, pieces of my hip and other dead peoples donated bone cubes top and bottom thanks to the long term affects of a bad car wreck. It was Easter Sunday, April 11th, 3:32 PM DST 1984, sunny, light fluffy clouds, 48 deg F, front left corner of 84 BIG BLACK RWD Chrysler New Yorker vrs driver door of wimpy, (but very fun), 81 Toyota Celica GT, when I awoke on the double yellow line of the highway, staring at the sky, covered in a pool of blood, with a pebble painfully digging into the back of my head that was full of glass cubes and a guy screaming at me not to move the ambulance was on the way, I knew I lost!.

To defend my selling her off, it isn't by any means the car, it's that my neck spine area only flexes and swivels off the very top vertabra at the skull and doesn't flex again until mid shoulder blade, lower spine is solid tail bone to almost the bottom of rib cage, I have two herniated discs just above the lower fusion area that need a disectomy<sp??>, or further fusion simple terms, and one in my thorasic at T9 thats too dangerous to operate on, I am partially paralized on my left side, primarily the left boob, shoulder and arm but my legs a bit off too. It hurts to sit the way you have to in a sports car like these when you don't flex and body parts dont' work right. I just need to move on.

What's next?, oh I dont' know, one extreem to the other maybe??? eBay item #190296472031

Hey! I am sure you all would love to have this following behind on a sunny day drive.......with a trailer on the back in case you needed a tow and a trunk load of tools and spares.......and room for 8, (if you break and need a ride), as comfortable as todays American full size car that really doesn't but claimes to haul 6! heck, this car could fit a whole Beta in the trunk and still pull a house! LOL


I don't know, I'm going to look at it this weekend, turns out it's about 20 miles from me and no cities to drive thru on the way, just a bunch of back country roads passing farms and such. Owners 84, bought it new, never drove it in winter, will depend on how much he loves it, he'll have to sell it cheap so I can afford to drive it a few miles once in a while. Might find it hard to go from 30MPG to 5MPG! <scarey chuckle>, but I only drove 1800 miles total last year, thats the Beta and my van, I only drove the Beta 380 miles last year

I am not sure it will fit in my garage, I am going to measure it when we go up to look at it

[ckeen74]

That boat looks pretty cool, I've always fantasized about driving one of those with the hubcaps flying off.

Hmm... maybe you need a Beta sedan. Not so pretty on the outside, but the same underneath! And probably easier to get into.

[DJ]

Hmm... maybe you need a Beta sedan. Not so pretty on the outside, but the same underneath! And probably easier to get into.

Yeah! With an automatic! :rolleyes:

[Jim Keller]

Uh, excuse me for saying this about a Sedan.....but.....NO FREAKIN WAY!...."WAY" too ugly and no automatic! or at least one that works, LOL

The thing about the Mercury, everyone in my County, except my wife, can work on it for me! LOL, however, I AM the "ONLY" Lancia mechanic for at least 50 miles around here. I am not so much stepping away from Lancia as I am stepping away from wrenching.......last visit to the doc's last week made up my mind, I really didn't like what he told me at all

[ckeen74]

Hahah.... ugly is in the eye of the beholder. I call it funky. :D

Never actually heard of an existing sedan with an automatic, and I wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot-pole either. Speaking from personal experience, I certainly agree a wrench-free lifestyle does not agree with Beta ownership.

[Jim Keller]

Case in point:
I just got back from a good friend's local shop, $50 to turn my rotors and clear the codes on my Windstar that was causing the antilok/trac control/ABS lights to light up the interior of the van in pitch black night like it was a sunny day! ha ha ha, and make the trac control go nuts when I tried to pull away from a stop at or near full steering lock...........amazing what nothing more than a warped brake rotor will do to the sensors on these newer vehicals!, nor the idiot lights it sets off!! I just stood there and drank beer and babbled in his ear, we both enjoyed it.......well worth it, but he want's nothing to do with my Betas, not because he can't do it, he just doesn't want to learn how to work on another brand, he knows and is kept extreemly busy on the big three American.......that seams, in the panic press anyway, all but one are about to dissapear! LOL/Criying out loud

[davidb]

Wish you guys would stop dumping on Sedans. I luved mine.
Plus is they're super cheap now [if you can find one] minus
is a 2 ltr. F.I. transplant is almost a must so that leaves Jim
out. One might say their styling only appeals to the eccentric
but using eccentric and Lancia in the same sentence = oxy-
moron.

[Will]

Wish you guys would stop dumping on Sedans. I luved mine.
Plus is they're super cheap now [if you can find one] minus
is a 2 ltr. F.I. transplant is almost a must so that leaves Jim
out. One might say their styling only appeals to the eccentric
but using eccentric and Lancia in the same sentence = oxy-
moron.

Disagree, I think "eccentric" + "lancia" = tautology. :D

[1,6 HF]

Disagree, I think "eccentric" + "lancia" = tautology. :D

+1 on that.

Lancia has a very long history of eccentricity; any time Lancia engineers had to choose between a conventional approach and an eccentric one that required twice as much effort but obtained slightly better results, they went the eccentric route every time.

That eccentricity is precisely what's made the cars so exceptional.

[DJ]

Disagree, I think "eccentric" + "lancia" = tautology. :D

Yeah. And it's redundant, too. :rolleyes:

[davidb]

As always Ed I say thank you for interpreting my post
properly re: eccentric [whatever spelling-wise]. I never
implied a Sedan w/that boat anchor automatic trans-
mission was a suggestion. Granted most [imported]
Sedans included same. My '78 Sedan had a 5-spd, w/
A/C as the only option. It was a VERY good, RELIABLE
car [bought new] for almost 100K miles. I am not so
much in luv w/the Sedan's style [body]: ENGINE was
the thing for me. Almost 100K w/tune-ups & oil changes,
never a problem? Sold me on Lampredi engines which
is why I'm back after a 20+ yr. hiatus. Well sure I want
to feel a Lancia Beta suspension again too . . .

[SubGothius]

Disagree, I think "eccentric" + "lancia" = tautology. :DYeah. And it's redundant, too. :rolleyes:

I've got here the May 1979 Car & Driver road test of the Lancia Zagato, summed up with the following tagline:

The car for those who view eccentricity as a virtue and fun as a necessity.

Besides, a manufacturer doesn't rack up many automotive production firsts by always following the traditional, time-tested, tried'n'true approach... :rolleyes:

There's an old joke that distinguishes among old European sports car marques according to how they'd affix a minor component to the car: FIAT would use a stamped sheetmetal bracket spot-welded to the chassis; MG would use a generic boilerplate tractor part affixed and clamped by half a dozen screws and bolts of different sizes; Alfa would cast a nice, gorgeous aluminum bracket for just that component. To this venerable list, I'd add: Lancia would eliminate the need for a bracket by integrating mounting tabs into the component itself, and probably combine it with at least one other component while designing-in other features to solve other conceivable problems that may not ever actually exist. :D